If You Think The Music Industry Has a Broken Business Model…

Try publishing instead.

Above is my current up-to-date royalty balance from one of the major platforms that publish my books.

If you buy a paperback in a bookstore for $20, the author is fortunate to get 47 cents from her/his publisher (unless your last name happens to be Rowling).

For every paperback I’m allowed to order, after paying customs duties and taxes, it lands in Canada for $16.63; I get $16.95 from stores so I make a princely 32 cents per copy. #hallel…frigging…ujah

If you think e-copies sold on major platforms are better, you just haven’t dealt with any of the big players yet, who have more money than god, but their authors are paupers.

Apparently, there were 2.4 million new books uploaded to Amazon in 2014, just in the US alone. Average sales? Fewer than 20 copies I am told.

Here’s the new math: you work for two years to write your magnum opus. You pay an editor $3,000 to edit the thing. You get someone to create brilliant cover artwork. You pay them another $850. You upload it to the sales platform. #exciting

You sell 20 copies (half of them to your mother): 18 of them are e-copies at $9.95 each, 2 of them are paperbacks at $20 each.

Total sales? $219.10

Your share after expenses? $87.64

Amount you receive from your platform? 0 dollars because you haven’t met their minimum for cutting you a check/cheque or transferring funds (which is $100).

Your profit for two years work? -$3,850

#WTF

@ quantum_entity @ profbruce